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I'm free to say whatever I like, if it's wrong or right it's alright

TSN & RDS Grab Rights To UEFA Champions & Europa League From 2015

I’ve given TSN shit over the years for calling themselves The Home of Soccer in Canada despite not having FIFA tournaments, the UEFA Champions League and barely showing any non-Canadian MLS action. Well, it may be time to eat my toque. MLS and EPL games on the network increased with the addition of the three new feeds earlier this year (though still not enough to show a majority of MLS playoff games), TSN has the FIFA Men’s and Women’s World Cups beginning next year and now, TSN and RDS announced today they are the home of the UEFA Champions League and Europa League beginning in 2015.

In the multi-year agreement, TSN will broadcast up to 16 games each week during the group stage and extensive coverage of the knockout rounds and both finals. RDS will cover three games live each week.

In an unusual joint venture, beIN Sports Canada will show over 55 Champions games during the year and more than 90 Europa games providing Canadians will more European high-level football than ever before.

The deal also includes broadcast rights for games to be on TSN Radio across the country.

This huge get for TSN can easily be correlated to the Rogers multi-bazillion dollar NHL deal. Not wanting to speculate, but no doubt Sportsnet didn’t have the money to match what TSN was offering. It will be interesting to see how the EPL rights fall for the 2016 contract.

I don’t think Sportsnet World is totally worthless. It still has the FA Cup. As I have have Bein Sports but not Sportsnet World I have to watch the FA Cup in pubs. In a perfect world I would like either TSN or the regular Sportsnet channels to show all the football ( soccer) and rugby

I actually wonder if TSN might make a play on the FA Cup at some point. With 5 channels they could probably show 5-6 matches per weekend without a problem considering they show 5 EPL matches every other weekend.

I think TSN will show 5 games for each group stage day. Then another will be live on beIN. And the other 2 on tape on beIN. That would account for 36 matches. Plus it looks like they will be able to show the knockout stage as well as TSN (i.e. games will be on TSN and beIN both). That would give them their 55 matches. The press release explicitly states that the final will air on TSN and beIN.

Of note is that next year British rights switch from Sky Sport to BT. Assuming that TSN continues to use their commentary, and not UEFA’s cheap low-quality commentary feed. Not sure who BT will use yet beyond the top couple of commentators, but could mean a return of Ian Darke and Derek Rae to Canadian TVs.

There are only 125 games from the group stages forward. I’m dreading it’ll be even worse than Sportsnet’s current effort because TSN will blow everything up for Curling come February. At least now we get a game on the Sportsnet Main and a second on SN1. TSN will likely give us a match on TSN2 with the same curling feed replicated across 1/3/4/5.

I disagree with Dan’s claim that this correlates to Sportsnet’s NHL deal…unless the NHL deal is losing money. If the NHL deal is profitable, it should put Sportsnet in an even stronger position to bid on something that kicks off several hours away from hockey. The rich get richer….

We’ll see what Sportsnet does this year with the knockout phase, but last year the 2nd game was always on SN World, not SN1. Next year, TSN may put both games on their feeds, or they might ship the second one over to BeIN. Even then, we’d still have the same number of games on basic (SN/TSN) and premium channels (SN World/BeIN).

Sportsnet was also featuring less Group Stage games on basic channels this year compared to last year, with fewer (none?) on SN360. Hopefully TSN will reverse that trend, and throw 4 or 5 games on their feeds. It’s not like they have anything else to show at 2:45pm ET during the Group Stage.

TSN has the worst analyst for soccer, and they don’t show all the game. With Sportsnet losing the rights to the EPL, Sportsnet world is not worth the price as they don’t show any more games. I’d cancel that subscription for BeIN sports as there will be showing most of the games in 2016. Sportsnet will have Seria A and Bundesliga